From MSN Money. I strongly DO NOT recommend you follow any of the suggestions for saving food money in this article if you have sodium or other dietary restrictions--pre-packaged food at dollar stores or other places can be overloaded with sodium, sugar, fat, calories, and god knows what else.
Being broke doesn't mean you should slack off on nutrition! If anything, it counts more now, since you don't have money to waste on avoidable doctor visits.
If you buy dried legumes, low-sodium pastas, brown rice, and maybe oatmeal, you should be okay, but READ THE NUTRITION LABELS BEFORE BUYING and BEWARE ANYTHING IN CANS, BOTTLES, OR BOXES, such as tuna, salmon, condiments, canned fruits and veggies, crackers, breads, etc. BTW, there is no such thing as a safe pickle for sodium content--the last manufacturer of them went out of business about three years ago.
This is what I recommend for safer, cheaper food sources:
Cheap Eating with Cost Per Serving
Comparing the Cost of Canned and Frozen Meat to Fresh
Portion Control and Cost per Serving
Meat Manifesto
Filling Up on Fewer Calories with Less Food
How I Create (and Re-create) My Own Kitchen Convenience
You ask me, this author is committing the cardinal sin of food shopping--buying by price per item instead of price per serving. Think of how much more she could be saving by buying her food by price per serving!
Her method may indeed be used to stock an emergency stash of food for hurricanes, earthquakes, or whatever emergency makes you have to bug out with about a weeks' worth of food supplies, or even just for camping trips. As a long-term practice, I do not agree with it, though.
It would be cheaper (and healthier) to grow a garden via dollar store SEEDS rather than buying the pre-packaged foods.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comments:
Not to mention buying locally and in season, which is much cheaper. You should really shop by cost per health calorie. A bag of chips isn't cheap when you figure you only get a few servings out of each bag. A bag of organic apples seems expensive until you realize you'll get 8-10 servings and have much more energy and healthy calories from them.
I'm not sure why people choose to buy cheap food, instead of good quality food and skimp on other areas in their budgets (like cell-phones, cable TV, buying cheap Chinese crap, etc). I spend as much as I need to healthy local seasonal produce and save elsewhere in my budget. (I must add though that I spend much less than most people on groceries even though I'm buying all organic, local food).
Post a Comment